'"That!"—what?' said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. 'Why, what's wrong, Lawford?'

'That,' said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in his voice; 'those fields and that old empty farm—that village over there? Why did you bring me here?'

Grisel had not stirred. 'The village...'

'Ssh!' she said, catching her brother's sleeve; 'that's Detcham, yes, Detcham.'

Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and shuddered. 'No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has gone out of my mind. Not Detcham; I've been there before; don't look at me. Horrible, horrible. It takes me back—I can't think. I stood there, trying, trying; it's all in a blur. Don't ask me—a dream.'

Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. 'Don't think; don't even try. Why should you? We can't; we MUSTN'T go back.'

Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face towards the steep of the hill. 'I think, you know,' he said, stooping and whispering, 'HE would know—the window and the sun and the singing. And oh, of course it was too late. You understand—too late. And once... you can't go back; oh no. You won't leave me? You see, if you go, it would only be all. I could not be quite so alone. But Detcham—Detcham? perhaps you will not trust me—tell me? That was not the name.' He shuddered violently and turned dog-like beseeching eyes. 'To-morrow—yes, to-morrow,' he said, 'I will promise anything if you will not leave me now. Once—' But again the thread running so faintly through that inextricable maze of memory eluded him. 'So long as you won't leave me now!' he implored her.

She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer him at once....

In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the playing flames, he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he seemed merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She opened the little piano at the far end of the room and played on and on as fancy led—Chopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely forlorn old English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about itself the hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the thoughts of a solitary child. Ever and again a log burnt through its strength, and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance towards his visitor, and to turn another page. At last the music, too, fell silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his hand and eyed with a strange fixity brother and sister. His glance wandered slowly round the quiet flame-lit room.

'You won't,' he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme confidence, 'you won't much notice? They come and go. I try not to—to speak. It's the only way through. It is not that I don't know they're only dreams. But if once the—the others thought there had been any tampering'—he tapped his forehead meaningly—'here: if once they thought that, it would, you know, be quite over then. How could I prove...?' He turned cautiously towards the door, and with laborious significance nodded his head at them.

Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire. 'Tampering, my dear chap: That's what the lump said to the leaven.'

'Yes, yes,' said Lawford, putting out his hand, 'but you know what I mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then would be quite, quite hopeless. That would be poisoning the wells.'

They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite distinctly in the still night-shaded house they heard his door gently close. Then, as if by consent, they turned and looked long and questioningly into each other's faces.

'Then you are not afraid?' Herbert said quietly.

Grisel gazed steadily on, and almost imperceptibly shook her head.

'You mean?' he questioned her; but still he had again to read her answer in her eyes.

'Oh, very well, Grisel,' he said quietly, 'you know best,' and returned once more to his writing.

For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a little after midnight he awoke, with his face towards the uncurtained window, though for many minutes he lay brightly confronting all Orion, that from blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering square, he could not lift or stir his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at last and threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed from the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body that sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost all the remainder of the lagging darkness pacing softly to and fro; one face only before his eyes, the one sure thing, the one thing unattainable in a world of phantoms.

Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the back of the house, went off cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned Lawford was in his place at the breakfast-table. He sat on, moody and constrained, until even Herbert's haphazard talk trickled low.

'I fancy my sister is nursing a headache,' he said at last, 'but she'll be down soon. And I'm afraid from the looks of you, Lawford, your night was not particularly restful.' He felt his way very heedfully. 'Perhaps we walked you a little too far yesterday. We are so used to tramping that—' Lawford kept thoughtful eyes fixed on the deprecating face.

'I see what it is, Herbert—you are humouring me again. I have been wracking my brains in vain to remember what exactly DID happen yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in sleep. I get so far—and then I'm done. It won't give up a hint. But you really mustn't think I'm an invalid, or—or in my second childhood. The truth is,' he added, 'it's only my FIRST, come back again. But now that I've got so far, now that I'm really better, I—' He broke off rather vacantly, as if afraid of his own confidence. 'I must be getting on,' he summed up with an effort, 'and that's the solemn fact. I keep on forgetting I'm—I'm a ratepayer!'

Herbert sat round in his chair. 'You see, Lawford, the very term is little else than Double-Dutch to me. As a matter of fact Grisel sends all my hush-money to the horrible people that do the cleaning up, as it were. I can't catch their drift. Government to me is merely the spectacle of the clever, or the specious, managing the dull. It deals merely with the physical, and just the fringe of consciousness. I am not joking. I think I follow you. All I mean is that the obligations—mainly tepid, I take it—that are luring you back to the fold would be the very ones that would scare me quickest off. The imagination, the appeal faded: we're dead.'

Lawford opened his mouth; 'TEMPORARILY tepid,' he at last all but coughed out.

'Oh yes, of course,' said Herbert intelligently. 'Only temporarily. It's this beastly gregariousness that's the devil. The very thought of it undoes me—with an absolute shock of sheepishness. I suddenly realise my human nakedness: that here we are, little better than naked animals, bleating behind our illusory wattles on the slopes of—of infinity. And nakedness, after all, is a wholesome thing to realize only when one thinks too much of one's clothes. I peer sometimes, feebly enough, out of my wool, and it seems to me that all these busybodies, all these fact-devourers, all this news-reading rabble, are nothing brighter than very dull-witted children trying to play an imaginative game, much too deep for their poor reasons. I don't mean that YOUR wanting to go home is anything gregarious, but I do think THEIR insisting on your coming back at once might be. And I know you won't visit this stuff on me as anything more than just my "scum," as Grisel calls the fine flower of my maiden meditations. All that I really want to say is that we should both be more than delighted if you'd stay just as long as it will not be a bore for you to stay. Stay till you're heartily tired of us. Go back now, if you MUST; tell them how much better you are. Bolt off to a nerve specialist. He'll say complete rest—change of scene, and all that. They all do. Instinct via intellect. And why not take your rest here? We are such miserably dull company to one another it would be a greater pleasure to have you with us than I can say. I mean it from the very bottom of my heart. Do!'

Lawford listened. 'I wish—,' he began, and stopped dead again. 'Anyhow, I'll go back. I am afraid, Herbert, I've been playing truant. It was all very well while—To tell you the truth I can't think QUITE straight yet. But it won't last for ever. Besides—well, anyhow, I'll go back.'

'Right you are,' said Herbert, pretending to be cheerful. 'You can't expect, you really can't, everything to come right straight away. Just have patience. And now, let's go out and sit in the sun. They've mixed September up with May.'

And about half an hour afterwards he glanced up from his book to find his visitor fast asleep in his garden chair.

Grisel had taken her brother's place, with a little pile of needlework beside her on the grass, when Lawford again opened his eyes under the rosy shade of a parasol. He watched her for a while, without speaking.

'How long have I been asleep?' he said at last.

She started and looked up from her needle.

'That depends on how long you have been awake,' she said, smiling. 'My brother tells me,' she went on, beginning to stitch, 'that you have made up your mind to leave us to-day. Perhaps we are only flattering ourselves it has been a rest. But if it has—is that, do you think, quite wise?'

He leant forward and hid his face in his hands. 'It's because—it's because it's the only "must" I can see.'

'But even "musts"—well, we have to be sure even of "musts," haven't we? Are YOU?' She glanced up and for an instant their eyes met, and the falling water seemed to be sounding out of a distance so remote it might be but the echo of a dream. She stooped once more over her work.

'Supposing,' he said very slowly, and almost as if speaking to himself, 'supposing Sabathier—and you know he's merely like a friend now one mustn't be seen talking to—supposing he came back; what then?'

'Oh, but Sabathier's gone: he never really came. It was only a fancy—a mood. It was only you—another you.'

'Who was that yesterday, then?'

She glanced at him swiftly and knew the question was but a venture.

'Yesterday?'

'Oh, very well,' he said fretfully, 'you too! But if he did, if he did, come really back: "prey" and all?'

'What is the riddle?' she said, taking a deep breath and facing him brightly.

'Would MY "must" still be HIS?' The face he raised to her, as he leaned forward under the direct light of the sun, was so colourless, cadaverous and haggard, the thought crossed her mind that it did indeed seem little more than a shadowy mask that but one hour of darkness might dispel.

'You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be even thinking of defeat now?'

'"We"!'

'Oh no, you!' she cried triumphantly.

'You do not answer my question.'

'Nor you mine! It WAS a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a reason why you should cast your mind back? Is there, now?'

'Only,' said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, 'only because I love you': and listened in the silence to the words as one may watch a bird that has escaped for ever and irrevocably out of its cage, steadily flying on and on till lost to sight.

For an instant the grey eyes faltered. 'But that, surely,' she began in a low voice, still steadily sewing, 'that was our compact last night—that you should let me help, that you should trust me just as you trusted the mother years ago who came in the little cart with the shaggy dusty pony to the homesick boy watching at the window. Perhaps,' she added, her fingers trembling, 'in this odd shuffle of souls and faces, I AM that mother, and most frightfully anxious you should not give in. Why, even because of the tiredness, even because the cause seems vain, you must still fight on—wouldn't she have said it? Surely there are prizes, a daughter, a career, no end! And even they gone—still the self undimmed, undaunted, that took its drubbing like a man.'

'I know you know I'm all but crazed; you see this wretched mind all littered and broken down; look at me like that, then. Forget even you have befriended me and pretended—Why must I blunder on and on like this? Oh, Grisel, my friend, my friend, if only you loved me!'

Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a hiding-place. 'We can't talk here. How mad the day is. Listen, listen! I do—I do love you—mother and woman and friend—from the very moment you came. It's all so clear, so clear: that, and your miserable "must," my friend. Come, we will go away by ourselves a little, and talk. That way. I'll meet you by the gate.'



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall. Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran steeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where the woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green hollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours.

'There,' she said, holding out her hand to him, 'now we are alone. Just six hours or so—and then the sun will be there,' she pointed to the tree-tops to the west, 'and then you will have to go; for good, for good—you your way, and I mine. What a tangle—a tangle is this life of ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and I? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don't speak. Say nothing—poor face, poor hands. If only there were something to look to—to pray to!' She bent over his hand and pressed it to her breast. 'What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then—another parting.'

They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the first few birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday being past, to sing.

They talked, and were silent, and talked again with out question, or sadness, or regret, or reproach; she mocking even at themselves, mocking at this 'change'—'Why, and yet without it, would you ever even have dreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman went to his restless grave for me—for me? Need we understand? Were we told to pry? Who made us human must be human too. Why must we take such care, and make such a fret—this soul? I know it, I know it; it is all we have—"to save," they say, poor creatures. No, never to SPEND, and so they daren't for a solitary instant lift it on the finger from its cage. Well, we have; and now, soon, back it must go, back it must go, and try its best to whistle the day out. And yet, do you know, perhaps the very freedom does a little shake its—its monotony. It's true, you see, they have lived a long time; these Worldly Wisefolk they were wise before they were swaddled....

'There, and you are hungry?' she asked him, laughing in his eyes. 'Of course, of course you are—scarcely a mouthful since that first still wonderful supper. And you haven't slept a wink, except like a tired-out child after its first party, on that old garden chair. I sat and watched, and yes, almost hoped you'd never wake in case—in case. Come along, see, down there. I can't go home just yet. There's a little old inn—we'll go and sit down there—as if we were really trying to be romantic! I know the woman quite well; we can talk there—just the day out.'

They sat at a little table in the garden of 'The Cherry Trees,' its thick green apple branches burdened with ripened fruit. And Grisel tried to persuade him to eat and drink, 'for to-morrow we die,' she said, her hands trembling, her face as it were veiled with a faint mysterious light.

'There are dozens and dozens of old stories, you know,' she said, leaning on her elbows, 'dozens and dozens, meaning only us. You must, you must eat; look, just an apple. We've got to say good-bye. And faintness will double the difficulty.' She lightly touched his hand as if to compel him to smile with her. 'There, I'll peel it; and this is Eden; and soon it will be the cool of the evening. And then, oh yes, the voice will come. What nonsense I am talking. Never mind.'

They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly through the air and with busy claws set to its nets; and those small ghosts the robins went whistling restlessly among the heavy boughs.

A child presently came out of the porch of the inn into the garden, and stood with its battered doll in its arms, softly watching them awhile. But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst out laughing and ran in again.

Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. 'You see,' he said, 'the whole world mocks me. You say "this evening"; need it be, must it be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If you only knew what we should only detest each other for saying and for listening to. The whole thing's dulled and staled. Who wants a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the converted?—and I'm converted to Sabathier's God. Should we be sitting here talking like this if it were not so? I can't, I can't go back.'

She rose and stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching him.

'Won't you understand?' he continued. 'I am an outcast—a felon caught red-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous judgment. I hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do love you with all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don't ask new even. I can, I would begin again. God knows my face has changed enough even as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; how easily I could hide away—in your memory; and just wait, wait for you. In time even this wild futile madness too would fade away. Then I could come back. May I try?'

'I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, put off, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong, who knows what THEY mean, except that one's to be done and one's to be forsworn; or—forgive, my friend, the truest thing I ever said—or else we lose the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd weary of me. I know you, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though you have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or flesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you cries you must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark. Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what always are and must be foolish reasons because they are not reasons at all but ghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is your only hope of peace. Should I have staked so much on your finding that, and now throw up the game? Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk half the way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brother guesses—at least MY madness. I've talked and talked him nearly past his patience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely and soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can't even hear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!—well, I always thought it was much too plain a tale to have as dull an ending. And with us the powers beyond have played a newer trick, that's all. Another hour, and we will go. Till then there's just the solitary walk home and only the dull old haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves to watch our coming.'

Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame, with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above their fading coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness, awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that had sung in the spring sang now amid the same leaves, grown older too to give them harbourage.

Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacup on his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow propped on the table.

'Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,' said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face turned towards the clear green twilight of the open window. 'I have promised to walk part of the way with him. But I think first we must have some tea. No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are going to walk.'

The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather difficult silence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent, so far as Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air of impersonality that had so baffled his companion in their first queer talk together.

'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last. '"Here's Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I—what I want you to understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also that it is "good-bye."'

Herbert slowly turned. 'I don't quite see why "goodbye," Lawford. And—frankly, there is nothing to explain. We have chosen to live such a very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up a train of thought.... 'The truth is if one wants to live at all—one's own life, I mean—there's no time for many friends. And just steadfastly regarding your neighbour's tail as you follow it down into the Nowhere—it's that that seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go one's own way, doing one's best to free one's mind of cant—and I dare say clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One consequence is that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don't think I care a groat for any opinion as human as my own, good or bad. My sister's a million times a better woman than I am a man. What possibly could there be, then, for me to say?' He turned with a nervous smile. 'Why should it be good-bye?'

Lawford glanced involuntarily towards the door that stood in shadow duskily ajar. 'Well,' he said, 'we have talked, and we think it must be that, until, at least,' he smiled faintly, 'I can come as quietly as your old ghost you told me of; and in that case it may not be so very long to wait.'

Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. 'The more I think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I understand the frantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I went down, as you said, "a godsend of a little Miss Muffet," and the inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to dance my little wooden dance and wait till the showman should put me down into his box again. And now—well, here I am. The whole thing has gone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all my friends to swear to; and yet, Herbert, if you'll forgive me troubling you with this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or desire remains unchanged. You will remember all that, I hope. It's not, of course, the ghost of an apology, only the mere facts.'

Herbert rose and paced slowly across to the window. 'The longer I live, Lawford, the more I curse this futile gift of speech. Here am I, wanting to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal direct to mind, would be merely as the wind passing through the leaves of a tree with just one—one multitudinous rustle, but which, if I tried to put into words—well, daybreak would find us still groping on....' He turned; a peculiar wry smile on his face. 'It's a dumb world: but there we are. And some day you'll come again.'

'Well,' said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turn thought into such primitive speech, 'that's where we stand, then.' He got up suddenly like a man awakened in the midst of unforeseen danger, 'Where is your sister?' he cried, looking into the shadow. And as if in actual answer to his entreaty, they heard the clinking of the cups on the little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying into the room. She sat down on the window seat and put the tray down beside her. 'It will be before dark even now,' she said, glancing out at the faintly burning skies.

They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physical exhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in the fields since daybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long road began that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she stopped with a sob beside an old scarred milestone by the wayside. 'This—is as far as I can go,' she said. She stooped, and laid her hand on the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet with dew.' She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes, here it is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing now can trouble you again of that. We're both at least past that.'

'Grisel,' he said, 'forgive me, but I can't—I can't go on.'

'Don't think, don't think,' she said, taking his hands, and lifting them to her bosom. 'It's only how the day goes; and it has all, my one dear, happened scores and scores of times before—mother and child and friend—and lovers that are all these too, like us. We mustn't cry out. Perhaps it was all before even we could speak—this sorrow came. Take all the hope and all the future: and then may come our chance.'

'What's life to me now. You said the desire would come back; that I should shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don't know what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care for nothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dull voice keeps saying that I have no right to be telling you all this. You will know best. I know I am nothing. I ask nothing. If we love one another, what is there else to say?'

'Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you tell me that I have not told myself over and over again? Reason's gone. Thinking's gone. Now I am only sure.' She smiled shadowily. 'What peace did HE find who couldn't, perhaps, like you, face the last good-bye?'

They stood in utter solitude awhile in the evening gloom. The air was as still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea. Above them uncountable clouds drifted slowly across space.

'Why do they all keep whispering together?' he said in a low voice, with cowering face. 'Oh if you knew, Grisel, how they have hemmed me in; how they have come pressing in through the narrow gate I left ajar. Only to mock and mislead. It's all dark and unintelligible.'

He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to him to be gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her lips with his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to fill earth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave and lovely overshadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death the near fold of an immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint cry. And he found himself running and running, just as he had run that other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards his earthly home.



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face in his hands. Once, indeed, he did turn and grind his way back with hard uplifted face for many minutes, but at the meeting with an old woman who in the late dusk passed him unheeded on the road, he stopped again, and after standing awhile looking down upon the dust, trying to gather up the tangled threads of his thoughts, he once more set off homewards.

It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house. The lamp at the roadside obscurely lit its breadth and height. Lamp-light within, too, was showing yellow between the Venetian blinds; a cold gas-jet gleamed out of the basement window. He seemed bereft now of all desire or emotion, simply the passive witness of things external in a calm which, though he scarcely realised its cause, was an exquisite solace and relief. His senses were intensely sharpened with sleeplessness. The faintest sound belled clear and keen on his ear. The thinnest beam of light besprinkled his eyes with curious brilliance.

As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to the porch, and leaning between stone pilaster and wall, listened intently for any rumour of those within.

He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice quietly speak on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell silent by Sheila's—rapid, rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just come in, or were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the cumbersome door. It was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a black cotton glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute and inanimate things so coldly hostile?

An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild, almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept softly down again, and paused at the open gate. Once before the voices of the night had called him: they would not summon him forever in vain. He raised his eyes again towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the alien out? He narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long white window was ajar.

With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in, and stood listening again in the black passage on the other side. When he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough, perhaps, to admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he could see Ada sitting at the empty table, beneath the single whistling chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading apparently; but her back was turned to him and he could not distinguish her arm beyond the elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as, drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned his eyes away and waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over her magazine, and he stole on.

One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door and could hear with varying distinctness what those friendly voices were so absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some contrivance of science, registering passively the least sound, the faintest syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought that speech conveyed. He simply stood listening, fixed and motionless, like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden, stony, unspeculating.

'Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won't understand that it's far worse than that.' Sheila seemed to be upbraiding, or at least reasoning with, the last speaker. 'Ask Mr Danton—he actually SAW him.'

'"Saw him,"' repeated a thick, still voice. 'He stood there, in that very doorway, Mrs Lovat, and positively railed at me. He stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I wasn't—unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it I thought it was simply—I did indeed, Mrs Lawford—a monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it; shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I could have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford than—well, I won't repeat what particular word occurred to me. But there,' the corpulent shrug was almost audible, 'we all know what old Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far as mere character is concerned; the right man in the right place; but as gullible and as soft-hearted as a tom-tit. I've said all this before, I know, Mrs Lawford, and been properly snubbed for my pains. But if I had been Bethany I'd have sifted the whole story at the beginning, the moment he put his foot into the house. Look at that Tichborne fellow—went for months and months, just picking up one day what he floored old Hawkins—wasn't it?—with the next. But of course,' he added gloomily, 'now that's all too late. He's moaned himself into a tolerably tight corner. I'd just like to see, though, a British jury comparing this claimant with his photograph, 'pon my word I would. Where would he be then, do you think?'

'But my dear Mr Danton,' went on the clear, languid voice Lawford had heard break so light-heartedly into laughter, 'you don't mean to tell me that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she sees him—or, for the matter of that, when she doesn't see him? If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo to-morrow, I'd recognise him at the very first blush—literally! He'd go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain that the lamps had been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's paper. Oh, besides, Tom's Tom—and there's an end of it.'

'That's precisely what I think, Mrs Lovat; one is saturated with one's personality, as it were.'

'You see, that's just it! That's just exactly every woman's husband all over; he is saturated with his personality. Bravo, Mr Craik!'

'Good Lord,' said Danton softly. 'I don't deny it!'

'But that,' broke in Sheila crisply—'that's just precisely what I asked you all to come in for. It's because I know now, apart altogether from the mere evidence, that—that he is Arthur. Mind, I don't say I ever really doubted. I was only so utterly shocked, I suppose. I positively put posers to him; but his memory was perfect in spite of the shock which would have killed a—a more sensitive nature.' She had risen, it seemed, and was moving with all her splendid impressiveness of silk and presence across the general line of vision. But the hall was dark and still; her eyes were dimmed with light. Lawford could survey her there unmoved.

'Are you there, Ada?' she called discreetly.

'Yes, ma'am,' answered the faint voice from below.

'You have not heard anything—no knock?'

'No, ma'am, no knock.'

'The door is open if you should call.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'The girl's scared out of her wits,' said Sheila returning to her audience. 'I've told you all that miserable Ferguson story—a piece of calm, callous presence of mind I should never have dreamed my husband capable of. And the curious thing is—at least, it is no longer curious in the light of the ghastly facts I am only waiting for Mr Bethany to tell you—from the very first she instinctively detested the very mention of his name.'

'I believe, you know,' said Mr Craik with some decision, 'that servants must have the same wonderful instinct as dogs and children; they are natural, intuitive judges of character.'

'Yes,' said Sheila gravely, 'and it's only through that that I got to hear of the—the mysterious friend in the little pony-carriage. Ada's magnificently loyal—I will say that.'

'I don't want to suggest anything, Mrs Lawford,' began Mr Craik rather hurriedly, 'but wouldn't it perhaps be wiser not to wait for Mr Bethany? It is not at all unusual for him to be kept a considerable time in the vestry after service, and to-day is the Feast of St Michael's and all Angels, you know. Mightn't your husband be—er—coming back, don't you think?'

'Craik's right, Mrs Lawford; it's not a bit of good waiting. Bethany would stick there till midnight if any old woman's spiritual state could keep her going so long. Here we all are, and at any moment we may be interrupted. Mind you, I promise nothing—only that there shall be no scene. But here I am, and if he does come knocking and ringing and lunging out in the disgusting manner he—well, all I ask is permission to speak for YOU. 'Pon my soul, to think what you must have gone through! It isn't the place for ladies just now—honestly it ain't.'

'Besides, supposing the romantic lady of the pony-carriage has friends? Are YOU a pugilist, Mr Craik?'

'I hope I could give some little account of myself, Mrs Lovat; but you need have no anxiety about that.'

'There, Mr Danton. So as there is not the least cause for anxiety even if poor Arthur SHOULD return to his earthly home, may we share your dreadful story at once, Sheila; and then, perhaps, hear Mr Bethany's exposition of it when he DOES arrive? We are amply guarded.'

'Honestly, you know, you are a bit of a sceptic, Mrs Lovat,' pleaded Danton playfully. 'I've SEEN him.'

'And seeing is disbelieving, I suppose. Now then, Sheila.'

'I don't think there's the least chance of Arthur returning to-night,' said Sheila solemnly. 'I am perfectly well aware it's best to be as cheerful as one can—and as resolved; but I think, Bettie, when even you know the whole horrible secret, you won't think Mr Danton was—was horrified for nothing. The ghastly, the awful truth is that my husband—there is no other word for it—is—possessed!'

'"Possessed," Sheila! What in the name of all the creeps is that?'

'Well, I dare say Mr Craik will explain it much better than I can. By a devil, dear.' The voice was perfectly poised and restrained, and Mr Craik did not see fit for the moment to embellish the definition.

Lawford, with an almost wooden immobility, listened on.

'But THE devil, or A devil? Isn't there a distinction?' inquired Mrs Lovat.

'It's in the Bible, Bettie, over and over again. It was quite a common thing in the Middle Ages; I think I'm right in saying that, am I not, Mr Craik?' Mr Craik must have solemnly nodded or abundantly looked his unwilling affirmation. 'And what HAS been,' continued Sheila temperately, 'I suppose may be again.'

'When the fellow began raving at me the other night,' began Danton huskily, as if out of an unfathomable pit of reflection, 'among other things he said that I haven't any wish to remember was that I was a sceptic. And Bethany said DITTO to it. I don't mind being called a sceptic: why, I said myself Mrs Lovat was a sceptic just now! But when it comes to "devils," Mrs Lawford—I may be convinced about the other, but "devils"! Well, I've been in the City nearly twenty-five years, and it's my impression human nature can raise all the devils WE shall ever need. And another thing,' he added, as if inspired, and with an immensely intelligent blink, 'is it just precisely that word in the Revised Version—eh, Craik?'

'I'll certainly look it up, Danton. But I take it that Mrs Lawford is not so much insisting on the word, as on the—the manifestation. And I'm bound to confess that the Society for Psychical Research, which has among its members quite eminent and entirely trustworthy men of science—I am bound to admit they have some very curious stories to tell. The old idea was, you know, that there are seventy-two princely devils, and as many as seven million—er—commoners. It may very well sound quaint to our ears, Mrs Lovat; but there it is. But whether that has any bearing on—on what you were saying, Danton, I can't say. Perhaps Mrs Lawford will throw a little more light on the subject when she tells us on what precise facts her—her distressing theory is based.'

Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stooping forward a little he could, each in turn, scrutinise the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown.

'Yes,' Mrs Lovat was saying, 'I quite agree, Mr Craik. Seventy-two princes, and no princesses. Oh, these masculine prejudices! But do throw a little more modern light on the subject, Sheila.'

'I mean this,' said Sheila firmly. 'When I went in for the last time to say good-bye—and of course it was at his own wish that I did leave him; and precisely WHY he wished it is now unhappily only too apparent—I had brought him some money from the bank—fifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty pounds. And quite by the merest chance I glanced down, in passing, at a book he had apparently been reading, a book which he seemed very anxious to conceal with his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe he studied a little before we were married, and—well, I detest anything like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, "Why, you're reading French, Arthur!" He turned deathly white but made no answer.'

'And can't you even confide to us the title, Sheila?' sighed Mrs Lovat reproachfully.

'Wait a minute,' said Sheila; 'you shall make as much fun of the thing as you like, Bettie, when I've finished. I don't know why, but that peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. "Why French?" I kept asking myself. "Why French?" Arthur hasn't opened a French book for years. He doesn't even approve of the entente. His argument was that we ought to be friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When Ada came back the next evening and said he was out, I came the following morning—by myself—and knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in. His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over the house—one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone, and just that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something seemed to say to me—and it was surely providential—"Go downstairs!" And there in the breakfast-room the first thing I saw on the table was this book—a dingy, ragged, bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible, a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too here and there); and beside it was my own little school dictionary, my own child's 'She looked up sharply. 'What was that? Did anybody call?'

'Nobody I heard,' said Danton, staring stonily round.

'It may have been the passing of the wind,' suggested Mr Craik, after a pause.

'Peep between the blinds, Mr Craik; it may be poor Mr Bethany confronting Pneumonia in the porch.'

'There's no one there, Mrs Lovat,' said the curate, returning softly from his errand. 'Please continue your—your narrative, Mrs Lawford.'

'We are panting for the "devil," my dear.'

'Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur collection of—of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty pages from the end, I came upon this—gloating up at me from the table in my house before my very eyes?'

She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled pages, and passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view, as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his knees, stared into the portrait. Then he truculently lifted his cropped head.

'What did I say?' he said. 'What did I SAY? What did I tell old Bethany in this very room? What d'ye think of that, Mrs Lovat, for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d'ye make of that, Craik—eh? Devil—eh?'

Mrs Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her finger-tips handed the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled and mournful frown and returned them to Sheila.

She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to Danton.

'You agree,' she inquired softly, 'it's like?'

'Like! It's the livin' livid image. The livin' image,' he repeated, stretching out his arm, 'as he stood there that very night.'

'What will you say, then,' said Sheila, quietly, 'What will you say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been in his grave for over a hundred years?'

Danton's little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further into his head. 'I'd say, Mrs Lawford, if you'll excuse the word, that it might be a damn horrible coincidence—I'd go farther, an almost incredible coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I'd say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable piece of trickery. That's what I'd say. Oh, you don't know, Mrs Lovat. When a scamp's a scamp, he'll stop at nothing. I could tell you some tales.'

'Ah, but that's not all,' said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by one. 'We all of us know that my husband's story was that he had gone down to Widderstone—into the churchyard, for his convalescent ramble; that story's true. We all know that he said he had had a fit, a heart attack, and that a kind of—of stupor had come over him. I believe on my honour that's true too. But no one knows but he himself and Mr Bethany and I, that it was a wretched broken grave, quite at the bottom of the hill, that he chose for his resting place, nor—and I can't get the scene out of my head—nor that the name on that one solitary tombstone down there was—was...this!'

Danton rolled his eyes. 'I don't begin to follow,' he said stubbornly.

'You don't mean,' said Mr Craik, who had not removed his gaze from Sheila's face, 'I am not to take it that you mean, Mrs Lawford, the—the other?'

'Yes,' said Sheila, 'HIS'—she patted her skirts—'Sabathier's.'

'You mean,' said Mrs Lovat crisply, 'that the man in the grave is the man in the book, and that the man in the book is—is poor Arthur's changed face?'

Sheila nodded.

Danton rose cumbrously from his chair, looking beadily down on his three friends.

'Oh, but you know, it isn't—it isn't right,' he began. 'Lord! I can see him now. Glassy—yes, that's the very word I said—glassy. It won't do, Mrs Lawford; on my solemn honour, it won't do. I don't deny it, call it what you like; yes, devils, if you like. But what I say as a practical man is that it's just rank—that's what it is! Bethany's had too much rope. The time's gone by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all very well, but after all it's justice that clinches the bargain. There's only one way: we must catch him; we must lay the poor wretch by the heels before it's too late. No publicity, God bless me, no. We'd have all the rags in London on us. They'd pillory us nine days on end. We'd never live it down. No, we must just hush it up—a home or something; an asylum. For my part,' he turned like a huge toad, his chin low in his collar—'and I'd say the same if it was my own brother, and, after all, he is your husband, Mrs Lawford—I'd sooner he was in his grave. It takes two to play at that game, that's what I say. To lay himself open! I can't stand it—honestly, I can't stand it. And yet,' he jerked his chin over the peak of his collar towards the ladies, 'and yet you say he's being fetched; comes creeping home, and is fetched at dark by a—a lady in a pony-carriage. God bless me! It's rank. What,' he broke out violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word, and all deference to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know this—a couple of hundred years ago they would have burnt a man at the stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how, and I don't know when: his mother, I've always heard say, was a little eccentric; but the truth is he's managed by some unholy legerdemain to get the thing at his finger's ends; that's what it is. Think of that unspeakable book. Left open on the table! Look at his Ferguson game. It's our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of mischief. It reflects all round. There's no getting out of it; we're all in it. And tar sticks. And then there's poor little Alice to consider, and—and you yourself, Mrs. Lawford: I wouldn't give the fellow—friend though he was, in a way—it isn't safe to give him five minutes' freedom. We've simply got to save you from yourself, Mrs Lawford; that's what it is—and from old-fashioned sentiment. And I only wish Bethany was here now to dispute it!'

He stirred himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood in the middle of the hearthrug, gently oscillating, with his hands behind his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent house his posture suddenly stiffened, and he lifted a little, with heavy, steady lids, his head.

'What is the matter, Danton?' said Mr Craik in a small voice; 'why are you listening?'

'I wasn't listening,' said Danton stoutly, 'I was thinking.'

At the same moment, at the creak of a footstep on the kitchen stairs, Lawford also had drawn soundlessly back into the darkness of the empty drawing-room.

'While Mr Danton is "thinking," Sheila,' Mrs Lovat was softly interposing, 'do please listen a moment to me. Do you mean really that that Frenchman—the one you've pocketed—is the poor creature in the grave?'

'Yes, Mrs Lawford,' said Mr Craik, putting out his face a little, 'are we to take it that you mean that?'

'It's the same date, dear, the same name even to the spelling; what possibly else can I think?'

'And that the poor creature in the grave actually climbed up out of the darkness and—well, what?'

'I know no more than you do NOW, Bettie. But the two faces—you must remember you haven't seen my husband SINCE.' You must remember you haven't heard the peculiar—the most peculiar things he—Arthur himself—has said to me. Things such as a wife... And not in jest, Bettie; I assure you....'

'And Mr Bethany?' interpolated Mr Craik modestly, feeling his way.

'Pah, Bethany, Craik! He'd back Old Nick himself if he came with a good tale. We've got to act; we've got to settle his hash before he does any mischief.'

'Well,' began Mrs Lovat, smiling a little remorsefully beneath the arch of her raised eyebrows, 'I sincerely hope you'll all forgive me; but I really am, heart and soul, with Old Nick, as Mr Danton seems on intimate terms enough to call him. Dead, he is really immensely alluring; and alive, I think, awfully—just awfully pitiful and—and pathetic. But if I know anything of Arthur he won't be beaten by a Frenchman. As for just the portrait, I think, do you know, I almost prefer dark men'—she glanced up at the face immediately in front of the clock—'at least,' she added softly, 'when they are not looking very vindictive. I suppose people are fairly often possessed, Mr Craik? HOW many "deadly sins" are there?'

'As a matter of fact, Mrs Lovat, there are seven. But I think in this case Mrs Lawford intends to suggest not so much that—that her husband is in that condition; habitual sin, you know—grave enough, of course, I own—but that he is actually being compelled, even to the extent of a more or less complete change of physiognomy, to follow the biddings of some atrocious spiritual influence. It is no breach of confidence to say that I have myself been present at a death-bed where the struggle against what I may call the end was perfectly awful to witness. I don't profess to follow all the ramifications of the affair, but though possibly Mr Danton may seem a little harsh, such harshness, if I may venture to intercede, is not necessarily "vindictive." And—and personal security is a consideration.'

'If you only knew the awful fear, the awful uncertainty I have been in, Bettie! Oh, it is worse, infinitely worse, than you can possibly imagine. I have myself heard the Voice speak out of him—a high, hard, nasal voice. I've seen what Mr Danton calls the "glassiness" come into his face, and an expression so wild and so appallingly depraved, as it were, that I have had to hurry downstairs to hide myself from the thought. I'm willing to sacrifice everything for my own husband and for Alice; but can it be expected of me to go on harbouring....' Lawford listened on in vain for a moment; poor Sheila, it seemed, had all but broken down.

'Look here, Mrs Lawford,' began Danton huskily, 'you really mustn't give way; you really mustn't. It's awful, unspeakably awful, I admit. But here we are; friends, in the midst of friends. And there's absolutely nothing—What's that? Eh? Who is it?... Oh, the maid!'

Ada stood in the doorway looking in. 'All I've come to ask, ma'am,' she said in a low voice, 'is, am I to stay downstairs any longer? And are you aware there's somebody in the house?'

'What's that? What's that you're saying?' broke out the husky voice again. 'Control yourself! Speak gently! What's that?'

'Begging your pardon, sir, I'm perfectly under control. And all I say is that I can't stay any longer alone downstairs there. There's somebody in the house.'

A concentrated hush seemed to have fallen on the little assembly.

'"Somebody"—but who?' said Sheila out of the silence. 'You come up here, Ada, with these idle fancies. Who's in the house? There has been no knock—no footstep.'

'No knock, no footstep, ma'am, that I've heard. It's Dr Ferguson, ma'am. He was here that first night; and he's been here ever since. He was here when I came on Tuesday; and he was here last night. And he's here now. I can't be deceived by my own feelings. It's not right, it's not out-spoken to keep me in the dark like this. And if you have no objection, I would like to go home.'

Lawford in his utter weariness had nearly closed the door and now sat bent up on a chair, wondering vaguely when this poor play was coming to an end, longing with an intensity almost beyond endurance for the keen night air, the open sky. But still his ears drank in every tiniest sound or stir. He heard Danton's lowered voice muttering his arguments. He heard Ada quietly sniffing in the darkness of the hall. And this was his world! This was his life's panorama, creaking on at every jolt. This was the 'must' Grisel had sent him back to—these poor fools packed together in a panic at an old stale tale! Well, they would all come out presently, and cluster; and the crested, cackling fellow would lead them safely away out of the haunted farmyard.

He started out of his reverie at Danton's voice close at hand.

'Look here, my good girl, we haven't the least intention of keeping you in the dark. If you want to leave your mistress like this in the midst of her anxieties she says you can go and welcome. But it's not a bit of good in the world coming up with these cock-and-bull stories. The truth is your master's mad, that's the sober truth of it—hopelessly insane, you understand; and we've got to find him. But nothing's to be said, d'ye see? It's got to be done without fuss or scandal. But if there's any witness wanted, or anything of that kind, why, here you are; and,' he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible hoot, 'and well worth your while! You did see him, eh? Step into the trap, and all that?'

Ada stood silent a moment. 'I don't know, sir,' she began quietly, 'by what right you speak to me about what you call my cock-and-bull stories. If the master is mad, all I can say to anybody is I'm very sorry to hear it. I came to my mistress, sir, if you please; and I prefer to take my orders from one who has a right to give them. Did I understand you to say, ma'am, that you wouldn't want me any more this evening?'

Sheila had swept solemnly to the door. 'Mr Danton meant all that he said quite kindly, Ada. I can perfectly understand your feelings—perfectly. And I'm very much obliged to you for all your kindness to me in very trying circumstances. We are all agreed—we are forced to the terrible conclusion which—which Mr Danton has just—expressed. And I know I can rely on your discretion. Don't stay on a moment if you really are afraid. But when you say "some one" Ada, do you mean—some one like you or me; or do you mean—the other?'

'I've been sitting in the kitchen, ma'am, unable to move. I'm watched everywhere. The other evening I went into the drawing-room—I was alone in the house—and... I can't describe it. It wasn't dark; and yet it was all still and black, like the ruins after a fire. I don't mean I saw it, only that it was like a scene. And then the watching—I am quite aware to some it may sound all fancy. But I'm not superstitious, never was. I only mean—that I can't sit alone here. I daren't. Else, I'm quite myself. So if so be you don't want me any more; if I can't be of any further use to you or to—to Mr. Lawford, I'd prefer to go home.'

'Very well, Ada; thank you. You can go out this way.'

The door was unchained and unbolted, and 'Good-night' said. And Sheila swept back in sombre pomp to her absorbed friends.

'She's quite a good creature at heart,' she explained frankly, as if to disclaim any finesse, 'and almost quixotically loyal. But what really did she mean, do you think? She is so obstinate. That maddening "some one"! How they do repeat themselves. It can't be my husband; not Dr Ferguson, I mean. You don't suppose—oh surely, not "some one" else!' Again the dark silence of the house seemed to drift in on the little company.

Mr Craik cleared his throat. 'I failed to catch quite all that the maid said,' he murmured apologetically; 'but I certainly did gather it was to some kind of—of emanation she was referring. And the "ruin," you know. I'm not a mystic; and yet do you know, that somehow seemed to me almost offensively suggestive of—of demonic influence. You don't suppose, Mrs Lawford—and of course I wouldn't for a moment venture on such a conjecture unsupported-but even if this restless spirit (let us call it) did succeed in making a footing, it might possibly be rather in the nature of a lodging than a permanent residence. Moreover we are, I think, bound to remember that probably in all spheres of existence like attracts like; even the Gadarene episode seems to suggest a possible MULTIPLICATION!' he peered largely. 'You don't suppose, Mrs Lawford...?'

'I think Mr Craik doesn't quite relish having to break the news, Sheila dear,' explained Mrs Lovat soothingly, 'that perhaps Sabathier's out. Which really is quite a heavenly suggestion, for in that case your husband would be in, wouldn't he? Just our old stolid Arthur again, you know. And next Mr Craik is suggesting, and it certainly does seem rather fascinating, that poor Ada's got mixed up with the Frenchman's friends, or perhaps, even, with one of the seventy-two Princes Royal. I know women can't, or mustn't reason, Mr Danton, but you do, I hope, just catch the drift?'

Danton started. 'I wasn't really listening to the girl,' he explained nonchalantly, shrugging his black shoulders and pursing up his eyes. 'Personally, Mrs Lovat, I'd pack the baggage off to-night, box and all. But it's not my business.'

'You mustn't be depressed—must he, Mr Craik? After all, my dear man, the business, as you call it, is not exactly entailed. But really, Sheila, I think it must be getting very late. Mr Bethany won't come now. And the dear old thing ought certainly to have his say before we go any further; OUGHTN'T he, Mr Danton? So what's the use of worriting poor Ada's ghost any longer. And as for poor Arthur—I haven't the faintest desire in the world to hear the little cart drive up, simply in case it should be to leave your unfortunate husband behind it, Sheila. What it must be to be alone all night in this house with a dead and buried Frenchman's face—well, I shudder, dear!'

'And yet, Mrs Lovat,' said Mr Craik, with some little show of returning bravado, 'as we make our bed, you know.'

'But in this case, you see,' she replied reflectively, 'if all accounts are true, Mr Craik, it's manifestly the wicked Frenchman who has made the bed, and Sheila who refu—— But look; Mr Danton is fretting to get home.'

'If you'll all go to the door,' said Danton, seizing a fleeting opportunity to raise his eyebrows more expressively even than if he had again shrugged his shoulders at Sheila, 'I'll put out the light.'

The night air flowed into the dark house as Danton hastily groped his way out of the dining-room.

'There's only one thing,' said Sheila slowly. 'When I last saw my husband, you know, he was, I think, the least bit better. He was always stubbornly convinced it would all come right in time. That's why, I think, he's been spending his—his evenings away from home. But supposing it did?'

'For my part,' said Mrs Lovat, breathing the faint wind that was rising out of the west, 'I'd sigh; I'd rub my eyes; I'd thank God for such an exciting dream; and I'd turn comfortably over and go to sleep again. I'm all for Arthur—absolutely—back against the wall.'

'For my part,' said Danton, looming in the dusk, 'friend or no friend, I'd cut the—I'd cut him dead. But don't fret, Mrs Lawford, devil or no devil, he's gone for good.'

'And for my part—' began Mr Craik; but the door at that moment slammed.

Voices, however, broke out almost immediately in the porch. And after a hurried consultation, Lawford in his stagnant retreat heard the door softly reopen, and the striking of a match. And Mr Craik, followed closely by Danton's great body, stole circumspectly across his dim chink, and the first adventurer went stumbling down the kitchen staircase.

'I suppose,' muttered Lawford, turning his head in the darkness, 'they have come back to put out the kitchen gas.'

Danton began a busy tuneless whistle between his teeth.

'Coming, Craik?' he called thickly, after a long pause.

Apparently no answer had been returned to his inquiry: he waited a little longer, with legs apart, and eyeballs enveloped in brooding darkness. 'I'll just go and tell the ladies you're coming,' he suddenly bawled down the hollow. 'Do you hear, Craik? They're alone, you know.' And with that he resolutely wheeled and rapidly made his way down the steps into the garden. Some few moments afterwards Mr Craik shook himself free of the basement, hastened at a spirited trot to rejoin his companions, and in his absence of mind omitted to shut the front door.



CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read here and there a flattened and almost meaningless sentiment. Sometimes a footstep passed echoing along the path under the trees, then his thoughts would leave him, and he would listen and listen till it had died quite out. It was all so very far away. And they too—these talkers—so very far away; as remote and yet as clear as the characters in a play when they have made their final bow, and have left the curtained stage, and one is standing uncompanioned and nearly the last of the spectators, and the lights that have summoned back reality again are being extinguished. It was only by painful effort of mind that he kept recalling himself to himself—why he was here; what it all meant; that this was indeed actuality.

Yet, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark. He glanced around him in the clear, black, stirless air. Here and there, it seemed, a humped or spindled form held against all comers its passive place. Here and there a tiny faintness of light played. Night after night these chairs and tables kept their blank vigil. Why, he thought, pleased as an overtired child with the fancy, in a sense they were always alone, shut up in a kind of senselessness—just like us all. But what—what, he had suddenly risen from his chair to ask himself—what on earth are they alone with? No precise answer had been forthcoming to that question. But as in turning in the doorway, he looked out into the night, flashing here and there in dark spaces of the sky above the withering apple leaves—the long dark wall and quiet untrodden road—with the tumultuous beating of the stars—one thing at least he was conscious of having learned in these last few days: he knew what kind of a place he was alone IN.

It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he had lost all remembrance of since childhood. And that queer homesickness, at any rate, was all Sabathier's doing, he thought, smiling in his rather careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together, that made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were only really appreciable with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over into the grave.

Just with one's lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering unknown, and a reiterated going back out of the solitude into the light and warmth, to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say good-bye:—that after all was this life on earth for those who watched as well as acted. What if one's earthly home were empty?—still the restless fretted traveller must tarry; 'for the horrible worst of it is, my friend,' he said, as if to some silent companion listening behind him, 'the worst of it is, YOUR way was just simply, solely suicide.' What was it Herbert had called it? Yes, a cul-de-sac—black, lofty, immensely still and old and picturesque, but none the less merely a contemptible cul-de-sac; no abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its flagstones for a groan from the fugitive and deluded refugee. There was no peace for the wicked. The question of course then came in—Was there any peace anywhere, for anybody?

He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old aunt whom he used to stay with as a child. 'Children should be seen and not heard,' she would say, peering at him over his favourite pudding.

His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again into reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes only imagination dimly conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind astir with a shadowy and ceaseless traffic which it wasn't at least THIS life's business to hearken after, or regard. And as he stood there in a mysteriously thronging peaceful solitude such as he had never known before, faintly out of the silence broke the sound of approaching hoofs. His heart seemed to gather itself close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes, so wildly had his blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained, caught up, with head slightly inclined, listening, as, with an interminable tardiness, measureless anguished hope died down into nothing in his mind.

Cold and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up those laggard moments. He turned with an infinite revulsion of feeling to look out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up at his gate.

He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight, pause, and look up at his darkened windows, and after a momentary hesitation, and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and fumble at the iron latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering aversion, still scarcely tinged with curiosity. She had succeeded in lifting the latch and in pushing her way through, and was even now steadily advancing towards him along the tiled path. And a minute after he recognised with the strangest reactions the quiet old figure that had shared a sunset with him ages and ages ago—his mother's old schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.

He was already ransacking the still faintly-perfumed dining-room for matches, and had just succeeded in relighting the still-warm lamp, when he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her peering in, in the gloom, with all her years' trickling customariness behind her, a little dubious of knocking on a wide-open door.

But the lamp lit Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor. 'I am alone,' he was explaining gravely, 'my wife's away and the whole house topsy-turvy. How very, very kind of you!'

The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of the steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed his outstretched hand. None the less she followed him in, and when she was well advanced into the lighted room, she sighed deeply, raised her veil over the front of her bonnet, and leisurely took out her spectacles.

'I suppose,' she was explaining in a little quiet voice, 'you ARE Mr Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch sight of a light in any of the windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me down at the wrong house.'

She raised her head, and first through, and then over her spectacles she deliberately and steadfastly regarded him.

'Yes,' she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely with satisfaction, to look for a chair. He wheeled the most comfortable up to the table.

'I have been visiting my old friend Miss Tucker—Rev W. Tucker's daughter—she, I knew, could give me your address; and sure enough she did. Your road, d'ye see, was on my way home. And I determined, in spite of the hour, just to inquire. You must understand, Mr Lawford, there was something that I rather particularly wanted to say to you. But there!—you're looking sadly, sadly ill; and,' she glanced round a little inquisitively, 'I think my story had better wait for a more convenient occasion.'

'Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not,' Lawford assured her, 'really. I have been ill, but I'm now practically quite myself again. My wife and daughter have gone away for a few days; and I follow to-morrow, so if you'll forgive such a very poor welcome, it may be my—my only chance. Do please let me hear.'

The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on its arms and softly panted, while out of the rather broad serenity of her face she sat blinking up at her companion as if after a long talk, instead of at the beginning of one. 'No,' she repeated reflectively, 'I don't like your looks at all; yet here we are, enjoying beautiful autumn weather, Mr Lawford, why not make use of it?'

'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I do. I have been making tremendous use of it.'

Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. 'And does your business permit of much walking?'

'Well, I've been malingering these last few days idling at home; but I am usually more or less my own man, Miss Sinnet. I walk a little.'

'H'm, but not much in my direction, Mr Lawford?' she quizzed him.

'All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I often—often think of you; and especially just lately.'

'Well, now,' she wriggled round her head to get a better view of him rather stiffly seated on his chair, 'that's very peculiar; because I too have been thinking lately a great deal of you. And yet—I fancy I shall succeed in mystifying you presently—not precisely of you, but of somebody else!'

'You do mystify me—"somebody else"!' he replied gallantly. 'And that is the story, I suppose?'

'That's the story,' repeated Miss Sinnet with some little triumph. 'Now, let me see; it was on Saturday last—yes, Saturday evening; a wonderful sunset; Bewley Heath.'

'Oh yes; my daughter's favourite walk.'

'And your daughter's age now?'

'She's nearly sixteen; Alice, you know.'

'Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It is a beautiful walk, and if fine, I generally take mine there too. It's near; there's shade; it's very little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed. And that I think is pretty well all that an old woman like me is fit for, Mr Lawford. "Nearly sixteen!" Is it possible? Dear, dear me? But let me get on. On my way home from the Heath, you may be aware, before one reaches the road again, there's a somewhat steep ascent. I haven't the strength I had, and whether I'm fatigued or not, I have always made it a rule to rest awhile on a most convenient little seat at the summit, admire the view—what I can see of it—and then make my way quietly, quietly home. On Saturday, however, and it most rarely occurs—once, I remember, when a very civil nursemaid was sitting with two charmingly behaved little children in the sunshine, and I heard they were my old friend Major Loder's son's children—on Saturday, as I was saying, my own particular little haunt was already occupied.' She glanced back at him from out of her thoughts, as it were. 'By a gentleman. I say, gentleman; though I must confess that his conduct—perhaps, too, a little something even in his appearance, somewhat belied the term. Anyhow, gentleman let us call him.'

Lawford, all attention, nodded, and encouragingly smiled.

'I'm not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr Lawford, who distrust strangers. I have never been molested, and I have enjoyed many and many a most interesting, and sometimes instructive, talk with an individual whom I've never seen in my life before, and this side of the grave perhaps, am never likely to see again.' She lifted her head with pursed lips, and gravely yet still flickeringly regarded him once more. 'Well, I made some trifling remark—the weather, the view, what-not,' she explained with a little jerk of her shoulder—'and to my extreme astonishment he turned and addressed me by name—Miss Sinnet. Unmistakably—Sinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won't considered THAT a very peculiar thing to do? But you will recollect, Mr Lawford, that I had been sitting there a considerable time. Surely, now, if you had recognised my face you would have addressed me at once?'

'Was he, do you think, Miss Sinnet, a little uncertain, perhaps?'

'Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The next thing my gentleman does is more mysterious still. His whole manner was a little peculiar, perhaps—a certain restlessness, what, in fact, one might be almost tempted to call a certain furtiveness of behaviour. Never mind. What he does next is to ask me a riddle! Perhaps you won't think that was peculiar either?'

'What was the riddle?' smiled Lawford.

'Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised, by some very faint resemblance in his face to his MOTHER, who was, he assured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at BRIGHTON. I thought and thought. I confess the adventure was beginning to be a little perplexing. But of course, very, very few of my old schoolfellows remain distinctly in my memory now; and I fear that grows more treacherous the longer I live. Their faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life most of them drifted out of sight—many, alas, are dead; and, well, at last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose that was?'

Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. 'Do tell me—who?'

'Your own poor dear mother, Mr Lawford.'

'HE said so?'

'No, no,' said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. 'I said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary Lawford; now do you see?'

'Yes, yes. But WAS he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very, very extraordinary. Did you see any likeness in his face?'

Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case again. 'Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn't it? I'm just going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn't let me forget the time. You must look after the time for me.'

'It's about a quarter to ten,' said Lawford, having glanced first at the stopped clock on the chimney-piece and then at his watch. He then sat quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady lifted her bonneted head and ever so gravely and benignly surveyed him.

'H'm,' she said at last. 'There's no mistaking YOU. It's Mary's chin, and Mary's brow—with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy eye. But you haven't all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any manner of means. She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful—it was, I suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite succeed in spoiling her.'

'The foreign strain?' Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at the quiet old figure. 'The foreign strain?'

Your mother's maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. THAT, I believe, is a foreign name.'

'Ah, yes,' said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest again. 'Van der Gucht, of course. I—how stupid of me!'

'As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there,' she flung out little fin-like sleeves, 'if you don't let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn't,' she added even more fretfully, 'you didn't tell me the time.'

Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying. 'It's a few minutes to ten,' he said at last.

'Dear me! And I'm keeping the cabman! I mast hurry on. Well, now, I put it to you; you shall be my father confessor—though I detest the idea in real life—was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness there?'

'What! None at all!' cried Lawford; 'not the faintest trace?'

'My dear good Mr Lawford,' she expostulated, patting her lap, 'there's very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in YOU, her own son. How could there be—how could you expect it in him, a complete stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might have been Mary's son for all that I could recollect. I haven't for years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from YOU. I am firmly of opinionthat I was justified. My motive was entirely benevolent. And then—to my positive amazement—well, I won't say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a "Thank you, Miss Bennett." Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won't agree that I had any justification in being vexed and—and affronted at THAT.'

'I think, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford solemnly, 'that you were perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—or the stranger.'

'Well, candidly,' said Miss Sinnett severely. 'I was very much scandalised; and I shouldn't be here now telling you my story if it hadn't been for your mother.'

'My mother!'

The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. 'Yes, Mr Lawford, your mother. I don't know why—something in his manner, something in his face—so dejected, so unhappy, so—if it is not uncharitablnesse to say it—so wild: it has haunted me: I haven't been able to put the matter out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why did he speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps—what might I not have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat—hoping to see him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that's my own affair. Elderly people like me are used—well, perhaps I won't say used—we're not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not have you fancy it's in any way a morbid or unhappy life to lead. We don't talk about it—certainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their Eden while they can; though there's plenty of apples, I fear, on the Tree yet, Mr Lawford.'

She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:—'We don't even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer to the wicket-gate there's other company around one than you'll find in—in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight. Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look ill, but you don't appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I feared in my—well, there—as I feared you might be. I must say, though, it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!'

She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned her head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the half-open door. 'But that's not my affair.' And again she looked at him for a little while.

Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the knee. 'Trouble or no trouble,' she said, 'it's never too late to remind a man of his mother. And I'm sure, Mr Lawford, I'm very glad to hear you are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may be: "While the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them," though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of my heart, not to YOU.'

She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.

'And now that I've eased my conscience,' said the old lady, pulling down her veil, 'I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if—!'

'He's there,' Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind—memories whose import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely descent became in their company something of a real experience even in such a brimming week.

'I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?' he said, pushing the old lady's silk skirts in after her as she slowly climbed into the carriage.

'Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,' she called back to him, groping her way into the rather musty gloom, 'you'll dream such dreams for yourself. Life's not what's just the fashion. And there are queerer things to be seen and heard just quietly in one's solitude than this busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my mystifying Bewley acquaintance—I confess I cannot make head or tail of him.'

'Was he,' said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, 'was his face very unpleasing?'

She raised a gloved hand. 'It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr Lawford; its—its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he faced his trouble out. But I shall never see him again.'

He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. 'I bet, Miss Sinnet,' he said earnestly, 'even your having thought kindly of the poor beggar eased his mind—whoever he may have been. I assure you, assure you of that.'

'Ay, but I did more than THINK,' replied the old lady with a chuckle that might have seemed even a little derisive if it had not been so profoundly magnanimous.

He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling at Miss Sinnet's inscrutable finesse went back into the house. 'And now, my friend,' he said, addressing peacefully the thronging darkness, 'the time's nearly up for me to go too.'

He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the unregarded silences of this last long talk his mind had made up itself. Only among impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice. In this old haunted house, amid this shallow turmoil no practicable clue could show itself of a way out. He would go away for a while.

He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into the breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and self-conscious schoolboy. At last he began:

'MY DEAR SHEILA,—I must tell you, to begin with, that the CHANGE has now all passed away. I am—as near as man can be—completely myself again. And next: that I overheard all that was said to-night in the dining-room.

'I'm sorry for listening; but it's no good going over all that now. Here I am, and, as you said, for Alice's sake we must make the best of it. I am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a chance to quiet down. I suppose every one comes sooner or later to a time in life when there is nothing else to be done but just shut one's eyes and blunder on. And that's all I can do now—blunder on....'

He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a revulsion of feeling—shame and hatred of himself surged up, and he tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, 'my dear Sheila,' dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He would write to Grisel another day.

He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his eyelids. And clearer than those which myriad-hued reality can ever present, pictures of the imagination swam up before his eyes. It seemed, indeed, that even now some ghost, some revenant of himself was sitting there, in the old green churchyard, roofed only with a thousand thousand stars. The breath of darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little scampering shape slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly, over the globe. He shuddered faintly, and looked out again into the small lamplit room.

Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly was walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait of one that has outlived his hour and most of his companions. Mice were scampering and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all about him, in the viewless air, the phantoms of another life passed by, unmindful of his motionless body. He fell into a lethargy of the senses, and only gradually became aware after a while of the strange long-drawn sigh of rain at the window. He rose and opened it. The night air flowed in, chilled with its waters and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed away all thought for a while. He turned back to his chair. He would wait until the rain had lulled before starting....

A little before midnight the door was softly, and with extreme care, pushed open, and Mr Bethany's old face, with an intense and sharpened scrutiny, looked in on the lamplit room. And as if still intent on the least sound within the empty walls around him, he came near, and stooping across the table, stared through his spectacles at the sidelong face of his friend, so still, with hands so lightly laid on the arms of his chair that the old man had need to watch closely to detect in his heavy slumber the slow measured rise and fall of his breast.

He turned wearily away muttering a little, between an immeasurable relief and a now almost intolerable medley of vexations. What WAS this monstrous web of Craik's? What HAD the creature been nodding and ducketing about?—those whisperings, that tattling? And what in the end, when you were old and sour and out-strategied, what was the end to be of this urgent dream called Life? He sat quietly down and drew his hands over his face, pushed his lean knotted fingers up under his spectacles, then sat blinking—and softly slowly deciphered the solitary 'My dear Sheila' on Lawford's note-paper. 'H'm,' he muttered, and looked up again at the dark still eyelids that in the strange torpor of sleep might yet be dimly conveying to the dreaming brain behind them some hint of his presence. 'I wish to goodness, you wonderful old creature,' he muttered, wagging his head, 'I wish to goodness you'd wake up.'

THE END